The 2015 Mad City Vegan Fest in Madison, WI was an amazing event. The place was packed which is pretty impressive for a state known for it’s dairy consumption.
A couple of vegan meat companies I hadn’t previously been familiar with were there. The Herbivorous Butcher http://www.theherbivorousbutcher.com/ was giving out samples and their meats and vegan cheeses were delicious. And you have to give them credit for their slogan “Meat-Free Meat!” I also enjoyed a sample from Uptons Naturals http://uptonsnaturals.com/products/.
I gave the talk, Vegan Nutrition: What Does the Science Say? to a crowded room of over 200 people. You can watch a video of the talk online by clicking the image above.
Vegan Outreach had a very busy table all day long, worked by Vic Sjodin, Kim Moffatt, John Jungenberg, and Kevin Cooney. (A couple days earlier in Chicago, I had the honor of giving Mr. Jungenberg a well-deserved Certificate of Achievement for handing out his 100,000th booklet at a dinner benefiting VO.)
Since June 19th, five folks from Vegan Outreach and The Humane League have been traveling the country handing out thousands and thousands of leaflets promoting vegan eating! Since the night we hit the road to present day (less than halfway through), we have already reached over 114,000 individuals with a message of compassion.
Of the hundreds of thousands we have reached, here are a few who have let us know their lives have been changed:
Autumn (above) received a booklet from the crew at our Orlando date. The date completely rained out, but we kept leafleting. While leafleting at Jacksonville, my tourmate José Elias handed Autumn a booklet. She enthusiastically told José her family is vegan, and that she has received the booklets before in the past. She proudly let us know the booklet we handed her in Orlando has inspired her to finally go veg! It made leafleting in a near-hurricane totally worth it!
JD received a leaflet two years ago and read through the entire pamphlet. Six months after he read our pamphlet, he has stopped eating animals entirely!
Rick and his daughter received a Vegan Outreach booklet last year at Warped Tour and let us know that as a result, they both went vegetarian!
Hundreds of requests for our Guide to Cruelty-Free Eating have been pouring in as a result of the team’s relentless leafleting. If youd like to be a part of this effective work and join us for a Warped Tour date in your city or be notified of Vegan Outreach in your area, please email [email protected]
On July 8th, the ban on wild animals performing in circuses will take effect in Mexico — making them the 29th country to pass this national ban. The ban includes tigers, elephants, zebras, lions, baboons, and camels. The penalty for continuing to use them as entertainment is $225,000!
There are currently an estimated 3,500 animals who will be affected by the ban, and the Mexican government is now working on finding adequate placement for retiring animals.
I picked some cucumber from my garden and lemons from my tree and decided to make lemonade. Since lemonade typically has a bunch of sugar (double what I put in this recipe), I tried to break it up by using watermelon chunks as a sweetener. It was delicious and super fresh!
Ingredients:
5 large lemons, halved
1/4 small watermellon, sliced
1/2 cucumber, peeled and sliced
3/4 cups sugar
8 cups water
Directions:
Juice lemons and pour lemon juice in a pitcher. Add the 8 cups of water, sugar, watermelon and cucumber and stir well. If you’re patient enough to let it sit overnight in the refrigerator, it is extra amazing the next morning.
The past two months have shown me how much can be accomplished by a team of dedicated people. Thanks to more than 100 Team Vegan members and over 800 contributors, $160,000 was raised during May and June. And these funds will be matched dollar-for-dollar by a group of very committed supporters, meaning $320,000 will go toward outreach for animals this year!
The Team Vegan campaign was such a joy! You all came together for a cause you’re passionate about – a cause you know is important. When you easily could have said, “Someone else will do it,” you stepped up. You understood that we are stronger together than we are alone – and then you proved it. Thank you.
Only one thing could match the joy that brings me: The work we will do with the money raised! Our Outreach Coordinators and hundreds of volunteers hand out booklets by the millions – in urban and remote areas all over the world. They inspire more and more people to adopt cruelty-free lifestyles, reducing the number of animals who will suffer on factory farms.
More than 100 Team Vegan members have raised over $130,000 since May 1, and there are only two days left!
Get in on the fun bydonating today to your favorite Team Vegan member.
We’re so close to meeting our goal of $150,000 – which will all be doubled by a few very generous donors! Farmed animals need your help now – please consider donating what you can to Team Vegan today.
Giving today is:
Easy: Even $10 helps! That’s just a couple of soy lattes!
Safe: Our online form is secure, and we never share donor info with other groups.
Fun: Look through a few profiles to see what I mean!
Summer time heat in Sacramento is brutal, so at the peak heat of the day I tend to crave something cold and tasty. This is my go-to for a healthy and easy dessert!
They keep well in a ziplock bag stored in the freezer, make a bunch and have them ready to eat on hot summer days!
Ingredients:
1 peeled frozen ripe banana, halved
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips, melted
2 dallops of peanut better
your choice of chopped nuts
one skewer, cut in half (optional)
Directions:
Stick a skewer in the middle of the banana.
Take your frozen banana and spread a dallop of peanut butter on it. Dip it in melted chocolate (I throw mine in the microwave for 2 minutes and stir), sprinkle your choice of nuts on them and place it on wax paper and let it dry.
Since May 1st, the dedicated members of Team Vegan have raised over $123,000 for animals. We are so close to reaching our goal of $150,000, which will be doubled to total $300,000! But we only have one week left, and we need your help now to expand our reach for animals!
Team Vegan funds are what fuels our Fall outreach, and we need the full $300,000 if we want to reach the most people possible.
In Fall 2014, we set a semester record of over one million people reached with a VO booklet. That means a million more people were exposed to the truth about animal agribusiness. A million more people learned that there’s a more compassionate way to eat and to live.
We hear every day from individuals who are making changes, taking steps toward cruelty-free living. But our work is far from over. There are so many people left to reach, and we can reach them – with your help!
Donate now to one of our hardworking Team Vegan members.
Monster record day here at California State University in Los Angeles: Becca Balvin, Fabienne Origer, Leron Rabinowiz, Nicole Casares, Kim Moffatt, and I [below] handed out 5,140 Vegan Outreach booklets. No cakewalk either – a lot of grinding it out alone; and the troops even got a bit cranky as we didn’t have water and didn’t wanna miss anyone, lol, so had to make them wait a bit.
Above, from left: Fabienne, Nicole, Vic, Leron, and Kim at CSULA.
I met Becca [below] at Whole Foods: I was just chatting it up with the cashier, and voila – now we are friends, and she is a VO volunteer and wants to leaflet more. She did great her first time out.
Approximately the fourth person Becca handed a leaflet to was Janiece [below, left], who casually mentioned, “Thanks, don’t need one, been veg since I got one of these a long time ago.” I was like, “Really? No way! Where did you get one?” And she told us, and I asked to record her on video real quick.
We also ran into Christine [below, right], who has been veg since getting a booklet and seeing Vegucated and Food, Inc. She credits a vegan diet to having more energy, being healthier, and shedding 40 pounds. She is encouraging her social circle to give it a go and asked to take more literature to show others! She’s also interested in leafleting with us.
Leron met another student who wants to leaflet, and I am emailing her. Many others stopped to talk and ask questions. I met two Catholic students who I had a long talk with and both were fascinated, and more or less expressed they had never thought about veganism in that way and were very sincere and kind and interested in veg eating, and it was a moving interaction for me.
We saw literally a fantastic amount of students reading down the line from where they got a booklet. Especially powerful and enthusing to me is seeing all the athletes engrossed in the new Compassionate Athlete booklet; it is unreal. A total game changer – I had no idea how powerful it would be and how much athletes identify with it, and how easily it dispels some of the central rationalizations and myths about why athletes can’t go vegan.
Dedicated Adopt a College volunteer Guy Grayson has leafleted Bramson ORT College 28 times this semester, handing out more than 4,800 Vegan Outreach booklets; and he’s reached another 5,600+ individuals, including many college students, leafleting NYC sidewalks this spring!
[At Bramson ORT College] I ran into a great, joyous young woman named Marina, who hugged me for my activism; another person interested in distributing pamphlets; another lovely Indian woman named Shamalaya, who needed to get the word out and who was the most emotionally devastated of anyone since I began pamphleting in 2000. She said, “You know they die but…” We called it the torture it is, and that’s the best day of my pamphleting ever. Not because I got the most pamphlets out – not nearly, but I know about five people are changed for life now, and two or three of them are on their way to becoming activists.
I used to only help animals out of duty, no pleasure in return at all, but now I feel thrilled some days, absolutely thrilled. Thanks a million for the Even If You Like Meat pamphlets.
